THE EXTERNALS

Chapter Thirteen

During lunch, Master Gbenga told a junior student to call me from my classroom while I was eating boiled potatoes with fried eggs delightfully. I thought he was going to tell me my lips were in no position to eat having failed his test, but all he did was beg me to help Janet prepare for her English test since I was very good at it.

Unfortunately, I forgot to do that because another teacher also begged me to help her watch over SS1 students while writing their because I was free and she trusted me my unbiased mind not to allow any of them practice any form of test malpractice and I promised to make her proud. However, nothing of such happened. The students didn't respect me because I wasn't as pretty as Halima or Janet. They bluntly told me they would never listen to me until I had a plastic surgery. Rather than ignore everything, I allowed their words to get to me and it was no good for me.

"Lily, are you okay?" Janet noticed I got lost in thought while teaching her how to write formal letters, without copying from a textbook like most students do at my school.

"Yeah. I'm perfectly fine", I repositioned myself on the couch we boah sat on.

"If anything is bothering you, just tell me. I'm popularly known as the problem solver," She said in a delightful manner.

"Really?" I chuckled though what she said wasn't funny.

Could it be that I too had a crush on her like the other boys in my classroom? That's so gross!

"I'm serious. My female classmates used to call me a witch", She made a facial expression that got me scared.

"That's enough.." I stammered, moving as far as possible from her yet she kept following me.

"How could a petty me scare Lily Allen like this?" She laughed and started rolling on the ground.

"In ten minutes, write a letter of 250 words to your uncle who is the new minister of education, telling him about the new policies you would like him to put in place", I decided to punish her for making fun of me.

"Is that an informal or formal letter?"She asked naively, and I instantly called myself a fool for thinking she was here to take the position that belonged to me.

" It's a formal letter", I answered her nicely.

"The time you gave me is too short for that", She complained.

"I'm trying to groom you and you're complaining. Do you think Master Yemi will give you the whole day?" I made it sound like I was assisting her.

"You're right" She turned to the first page of her tutoring note and started writing.

Janet finished the letter on time and I went through it to circle out punctuation and grammar errors for her to take note of. She wanted to stay back for a while even after I gave her back her note, and called it a day so I had to drag her out of my compound and lock the gate since I wasn't expecting any visitor.

The following morning, I was awakened by the sound of a heavy downpour and strong wind. If my aunt was home, she would have been praying endlessly for God to protect our faulty roof from falling off, but I wasn't bothered. I was too happy my English teacher would come late to school because there would be a scarcity of buses and traffic since the road to his house was bad. Even though I prepared a lot for his English test, I still felt inadequate to take it.